


Little Ghost Girl

by Mystwalker



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Amane is a little feral, Atem passed on, F/M, Functional Dysfunctional Family, Marik brought Bakura back, May contain Softshipping, Post-Canon, Slow Burn, Time Travel, Tragedyshipping, rewrite of an older fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-17
Updated: 2020-02-29
Packaged: 2021-02-19 03:16:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 11,888
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22771033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mystwalker/pseuds/Mystwalker
Summary: Amane Bakura didn't die in a car accident. Instead, she was transported to Ancient Egypt, where she lived for several years and worked in the service of the Pharaoh. Now, after a job gone wrong, she's back in the modern world. But time changes everyone, Amane included. It would be hard enough figuring out how to survive in a world she hasn't lived in for years, with a brother she thought she would never see again. But Amane isn't the only thing to pass through the gap between times, and with the Pharaoh gone, a group of unlikely heroes will have to deal with a new, rising threat.Rewrite of a story I wrote several years ago. Updates weekly.
Relationships: Atem/Bakura Amane (onesided), Bakura Amane & Atem, Bakura Amane & Bakura Ryou, Bakura Amane & Shizuka Kawai | Serenity Wheeler, Bakura Amane & Thief King Bakura, Bakura Amane & Yami Bakura, Bakura Amane/Marik Ishtar
Kudos: 1





	1. Entropy

**Author's Note:**

> This came about because my boyfriend got me back into Yu-Gi-Oh! and made me watch the Dark Side of Dimensions. I mentioned working on this fic in the past, and being disappointed that I was still not a good enough writer to do with it what I wanted. He convinced me to give it another shot, so here you go. The original fic is called The Ties that Bind Us and can be found on fanfiction.net, but I have changed everything except for the most basic premise.

The world tipped and spun on its axis, and she was falling backwards into the storm. The air around her burst into a cornucopia of colors. There was nothing to slow her fall, nothing to stop it. It was an inexorable pull, drawing her back into it. Down, and down, and down. 

_Oh..._ she thought, as her head tipped back and the feeling of it consumed her limbs. Her hand was light where the knife had left it--had it struck its mark? It had. She'd heard the sound, the anguished cry, but then things had happened too fast for her to process. He'd cast a spell, she'd thrown the knife. She'd heard a cry, seen gold beads scatter in the air like confetti she'd seen once, a long time ago. 

And then she'd been falling. And she hadn't been able to stop herself. 

And although a part of her was still numbed by surprise, still unable to process that she had been so caught off-guard, the colors that surrounded her brought on another thought. An older one, a thought from a different girl. A different time. 

_It's happening again..._

#

_"My name is Amane Bakura..."_

The last time she had fallen, she'd been a child. She remembered the incident in fragments. The bright light and jarring impact of the accident. Her mother screaming, silver hair streaming in the light as she twisted in her seat, throwing herself over her. The sound of breaking glass and the crunch of bone. And then a jerking motion, as she was ripped out of her seat.  
  
At first she thought she'd been flung out the window. But that didn't make any sense. Because her mother's hands had been tight on her shoulders and the car had been rolling, but she was still falling, still falling, still falling...  
  
She had vague memories of light. Of stone and gold and the air of something that felt too much like a tomb. The air was warm and tasting of sand, and she'd been standing barefoot, in a shapeless white dress that she definitely hadn't been wearing before.  
  
She'd been standing before a set of scales. An enormous golden set that dwarfed her, nearly reaching the ceilings. On one side of the scales, there was a feather. And behind the scales, a presence. Something tall and foreboding. It stared at her, and she felt her mouth go dry, her hands curling into fists at her side, as she asked it one question.  
  
"Am I dead...?"  
  
"No," the voice replied. "Not yet."  
  
"But I..." She swallowed hard, trying to get some moisture in her throat. "I..."  
  
"There is still much you must do."  
  
She remembered those words, and she remembered it all disappearing. She remembered falling again. And as she slipped away, she thought she remembered...something in the shadows. A voice, deep and terrible, lurking on the other side of the scales. A voice barely recognizable as female, that chuckled with dark amusement as it said, "Mark my words. That one will serve me."  
  
And then she'd been in the sand, and delirious with heat, and so thirsty it felt as if her lips were cracked stone. And the boy had been standing over her.  
  
He was a child, like her, but leaner, wilder. Feral. His skin was dark, but his hair was white. The same white as her own. He was shouting something furiously at her, but she didn't understand. His mouth formed words, sounds, demanding questions, but she didn't understand. She stared at him, uncomprehending, and he stepped back and threw his hands up into the air in disgust.  
  
He started to walk away, and she looked around her and realized that they were alone in the sand, just the two of them. That there was no one else she could see.  
  
She felt a flash of panic. She licked her lips and tried to will moisture into her throat. Tried to will something.  
  
Those words were the only thing she could think to say. Her voice came out cracked, broken. A shadow of its former self.  
  
"My name is Amane Bakura."  
  
She hadn't been expecting him to stop. He had been moving away with such purpose, but he did. He stopped, and looked over his shoulder at her. There was still fury in his expression, but it was fading, replaced by confusion and something else. Interest? Intrigue? He barked something at her that had the tone of a question. She didn't understand, but the statement of her own name had given her some clarity. She remembered travelling, with her father and mother. With her brother. She remembered the concept of a foreign language. She shook her head slowly to show she didn't understand.  
  
His brow twitched in impatience, and he reached up with one hand, placing it on his chest.  
  
"Bakura," he snapped.  
  
She understood then, or at least, she thought she did. She slowly raised her own hand, mimicking his gesture.  
  
"Amane."  
  
"Amani?" he asked, quirking a brow. It wasn't entirely right, but it wasn't entirely wrong. She nodded quickly.  
  
He said something else to her and then started walking away again. Amane stared at him, confused, feeling again that touch of panic. That fading hope. He was walking away, and she almost shouted when he stopped walking, when he looked over his shoulder and barked something at her. Louder, with the tone of command. He rolled his eyes and waved his arm in her direction, a universal gesture.  
  
Follow me.  
  
She scrambled to her feet, kicking up sand and nearly slipping in it in her haste to follow him.  
  
#  
  
Falling.  
  
The world was streamers of light around her, and she felt as if she were moving through a dream. She held on to those memories. They were slipping through her fingers like grains of sand, but she fought to hold on. The falling went on forever until it ended.  
  
The sky yawned open beneath her. Air, real air, whipped at her skin, and the sky overhead was a yawning blackness devoid of stars, lights shining from buildings that surrounded her. She heard noise--conversation, the honk of car horns, and then screaming. Screeching brakes. It was a cacophony of noise and she felt herself panic.  
  
Then she crashed to the earth, and all she knew was black.  
  
# 

"Landlord, _phone_!" 

Ryou Bakura was cooking. It was something he had occasionally enjoyed in the past, but it was something he found himself doing a lot more now, particularly since the number of bodies that needed sustenance had tripled in his house over the past year. He was engrossed in the task, and he was so used to tuning out noises from the living room that he didn't realize he was being spoken to until the voice called out for him again. 

" _Ryou_! Answer the damn _phone_!" 

Ryou blinked, straightening up from the sink. He cocked his head in the direction of the rest of the house and realized that just under the sound of the shooting game they were playing in the living room, he could hear the faint, tinny sound of his ringtone. He wiped his hands on a dishtowel and hurried into the hallway. 

"Sorry!," he said, running to the room where he had last left his phone--a small, cramped space that was nominally his father's office but that had been turned into his project room. "I didn't hear it!" 

"Are you going deaf?" Bakura demanded, leaning back from his game to yell at Ryou as he passed the open door. "Damn it, Marik, that's cheating!" 

"And that's rich coming from you." 

The sound of simulated gunfire followed Ryou as he ducked into the darkened room, following the sound of his ringtone. He could see the light of his screen from underneath a cloth he had thrown over his latest work in project. Ryou snatched it up, careful not to disturb the unfinished diorama, but before he could answer it, the ringing stopped. He blinked, looking down at the screen. 

**3 missed calls** , the screen read, and then underneath it, **Yugi Mutou**. 

Ryou was just about to call back when the phone started ringing again. This time, he answered it, raising it to his ear. 

"Yugi?" he began, confused. 

"Are you watching the news?" Yugi asked, before he could say anything else. He sounded almost breathless. Ryou looked back over his shoulder at the light and sound still spilling out from the living room. He leaned closer to the phone. 

"Should I be?" he asked. 

"Turn on the news," Yugi said. "Please, Bakura. It might be important." 

Ryou frowned, tiptoeing carefully over half-finished miniatures. He thought about reminding Yugi that--because of the possible confusion--he wasn't going by his surname anymore, but Yugi seemed almost frantic. The past few years had left Ryou with an instinct for trouble, and he had a familiar sinking feeling in his gut, the same coiling dread he had once felt before any of the many times where the world had slid out from under him. 

He moved as if in a dream, and walked into the living room, where his darker half and Marik Ishtar were seated on the couch, playing a video game. 

"Well?" Bakura snapped, not looking up from the screen as he mashed buttons furiously. "Who the fuck is trying to call you at this time of night?" 

"Yugi," Ryou said, still feeling a little dazed. There was silence on the other end of the phone, even though he knew that Yugi was still there. 

"And? What does he _want_?" 

"Can you pause your game?" Ryou asked, instead of answering. 

"What?" Bakura asked. "Tell him to go to hell. Why should I--?" 

He broke off suddenly, because at that moment, Marik's phone started ringing. The sinking feeling in Ryou's gut intensified. Marik hit the pause button before Bakura could, drawing a glare from the former Spirit of the Ring. Before Bakura could say anything, he picked up the phone, tossing the controller onto the couch and pressing it to his ear. He started speaking rapidly, in a blend of Egyptian and Egyptian Arabic that Ryou knew he only spoke with his siblings.

Bakura looked from Ryou to Marik and said, "What the hell is going on?" 

Ryou didn't say anything. He looked at Marik, who had walked away from them for a bit, hunching over his phone, and picked up the remote from the coffee table. He changed the channel to the Domino City News. 

It took him a while to understand what Yugi wanted him to see. There was a breaking news story in downtown Domino, and there were cameras and police tape pulled up around an intersection. He saw the red and blue lights of ambulances, and at first thought it was a traffic accident. But the headline was: **"BREAKING: Mysterious Girl Falls from Sky** " and the cameras were showing medical staff scrambling around a young girl, lying in the middle of the crossing. 

A young girl, with hair as white as his. 

A teenager, dressed in clothes that resembled Ancient Egyptian wear, gold bangles decorating her arms. A girl with features he recognized, because even though it had been years, even though she had clearly grown, he still remembered that face. 

A girl whose chest rose and fell with her breathing, even though her eyes were closed, showing that she was somehow, impossibly, alive. 

"Bakura?" Yugi asked. "Bakura, are you there?" 

Ryou didn't say anything. He couldn't respond, even if he wanted to. Because as soon as he saw the girl, the phone had fallen from nerveless fingers, tumbling to the floor. 


	2. Convergence

_The boy--Bakura--led her to a cave cut into the side of a hill, its entrance hidden by a covering of dried palm leaves. Once they were inside, he pulled the covering closed behind them, and then pointed authoritatively at a collection of clay pots in the corner. Amane opened one and found that they contained water, made warm by the heat of the day. She was so thirsty that she would have drunk it even if it were boiling. She crouched down and drank and drank until_ _Bakura_ _finally pushed her away from the jar with a snarl and an angry word, pointing her in the direction of the cavern wall, where the floor was softened by another pile of palm leaves with rumpled blankets discarded on top of them._

_Amane crawled over to it and sat, her feet by now blistered and throbbing. She curled up in the corner, watching as_ _Bakura_ _paced in the cavern, muttering to himself and occasionally pausing to run a hand through his hair. He seemed to be arguing with himself. She was too afraid and too tired to say anything, so she sat there and watched him, flinching like a scared rabbit when he eventually swung around to face her. He started walking towards her, and she shrank back against the wall in fear when he reached for her, but he made an impatient sound and grabbed at her ankle with a grip like a vise, turning it so that he could see her feet._

_If she_ had _been wearing sandals, they had broken long ago. She didn't remember how far she had walked, didn't remember anything but the heat. The pain in her feet, though, told her that it must have been too far. She sat there, trembling, as_ _Bakura_ _examined the damage before eventually releasing her, pushing her roughly back. He stood up, walking over to one side of the cave, and returned with a rag and a jar filled with a foul smelling paste. Amane cried out at the sting when he pressed the paste to the sole of her foot, but he grabbed onto her tightly and said something sharp and furious, and fear made her quiet down to little, hiccupping sobs until he was done._

_He left the cave and returned a few hours later with half a loaf of bread and a handful of dates, which he tossed disdainfully at her before perching on top of the water jars on the other side of the cave, hunching over his own meager supper. Amane ate, and even though her stomach was still crying out for more at the end of it, she didn't dare ask. When the sun set, the heat of the day was replaced by bitter cold, and they slept huddled under blankets, on opposite sides of the patch of palms._ _Bakura_ _slept with his back to her, as far away from her as it was possible to get. More than once, she thought she saw him stand up and move to the mouth of the cave, a gleaming knife clutched in his hand. He would stand at the entrance for a few moments before muttering to himself, coming back and dropping down onto the palms again._

_While her feet healed, life settled into a routine. In the morning,_ _Bakura_ _would leave before dawn, taking one of the empty jars of water. When he returned with a full jar, they would break their fast on whatever scraps they had leftover from the night before, and then_ _Bakura_ _would leave again. He would be gone for most of the day, and would return close to sunset, carrying food and supplies. Sometimes, the food was very little--scraps of bread, or dried fruit, or once, which turned her stomach, rats. Sometimes, he would return with some vegetables, or a bit of cheese. Very rarely, he would come back with fresh meat, which he'd cook over a fire they'd made, and snatch up with his hands when it was barely cooked, eating it hungrily. Sometimes, it was trinkets, or clothes, or medicine. Sometimes, it was coins._

_It wasn't uncommon for him to come back with bruises, or scratches or once, with a cut deep enough that it soaked through the bandage he had wrapped around it. Each time this happened, he didn't complain, but his mood was worse throughout the evening. Amane didn't have the words to ask him what had happened, or what he was doing, so she stayed out of his way._

_Most nights, he would point at an object and say a word to her until she could repeat it back to him. This way, she learned the words for 'water' and 'bread', 'locust' and 'blanket' and 'medicine', 'sand', 'moon', 'sun', 'fire', 'knife', and 'blood'. When she began to understand the point of the exercise, she started to collect objects throughout the day and bring them to him, asking him to name each of them in turn. He was usually in a good enough mood to do so, if only because it meant that they could stop speaking to each other in pantomime. She learned simple words and phrases. 'Yes' and 'no'. 'I'm hungry' and 'I'm thirsty'. 'Quiet'._

_One day, when she had recovered to the point that she could walk around without much difficulty,_ _Bakura_ _returned with a pair of sandals. They were big for her and had clearly been used before, but_ _Bakura_ _had glared at her as if daring her to complain. She tied them tightly and stuffed the gaps with papyrus, then had shuffled awkwardly out of the cave after him. They walked for about twenty minutes before she realized that he was leading her to a well on the outskirts of a village. A line of people waited, jars in hand to collect water. He handed her their empty jar, pushing her in the direction of the well. Amane understood and joined the line._

_The next morning, and all the mornings after that, she was in charge of fetching the water._

_At first, she struggled, unused to bearing the weight and travelling such long distances. She slipped a few times, and once, came close to dropping the jar in the sands. But she learned. Eventually, she could handle the task without trouble._

_One day, as she was walking back to the cave, a group of older boys accosted her. They had seen her lugging water, and from what little she understood, they had been intrigued by her fair, already sunburned skin, her white hair, her green eyes. They called her a witch and pushed her around between them, laughing. By then, she knew the word for 'stop', but they didn't listen when she shouted it. She lost her grip on the jar she was holding and it fell, splashing them all with the water._

_The sound of shattering pottery drew the town guards' attention and they broke up the commotion. In the chaos, Amane was able to flee. She returned to the cave clothing damp, empty-handed, still clutching shards of pottery in her hand. By the time she arrived, she was close to tears. And furious. She remembered being furious._

_Bakura looked up from where he was bent over the fire, scowling when he saw her._

_"What did you do, stupid girl?" he demanded. "Where is the water--?"_

_He stopped when she looked up at him. There must have been something in her eyes, because he didn't say anything when she threw the shards of pottery at his feet, when she stormed off to wrap herself in a blanket and sit down on the ground. Looking back, she wondered if what had happened must have been obvious, because Bakura got up and left the cave without a word._

_When he returned that evening, he had fresh bruises, and had split his knuckles. There was dried blood on the wrap he was wearing. He didn't answer when she asked him, in her halting speech, what had happened. But he did have a present for her._

_He'd gotten her a knife._

#

Amane awoke, gasping, to hands on her shoulders and someone grabbing her arm. She twisted her body around quickly, lashing out at the hands that held her. The world around her was all white lights and beeping sounds and something that smelled vaguely embalmed, but even disoriented as she was, she felt her hand strike flesh. Someone gasped, loosening up enough for Amane to slide her free hand down to her side, groping for a knife.

Her fingers closed around empty air, brushing against scratchy fabric, and she felt a flash of panic. What had happened to her knives? Her clothes? She was lying on a bed, and people were shouting at her, but she didn't understand the words. Her heart was beating too quickly, and she jerked her arm out of the grasp of the man holding it, swinging her legs over the metal side of the bed. Her bare feet touched something cold, and she felt a shudder run through her. 

A woman dressed in white reached for her, saying something, but Amane couldn't breathe. She reached out and shoved her, making her crash into a cart behind her. Metal tools clattered to the ground as she tried to push her way towards the door. Two people grabbed her, barring her way. 

_"Get out of my way!"_ she shouted, but the woman in front of her stared at her like she had grown a second head, her eyes wide with fear. _"Get out--!"_

"Amane!" 

The sound of the voice made her stop struggling, made her breath catch in her throat. She looked up at the door and saw a boy standing there, his hair the same silvery white as her own. His eyes were wide and brown, fixed on hers. His skin was pale, like hers. He was breathing hard, as if he had been running, one hand gripping the door frame for support. 

It was like the first time, in the desert. Except--except she _knew_ this boy. 

She gulped down a breath of air and realized that she could also understand the people around her. It wasn't a language she had spoken in a long time, but she...she knew it. She understood it. Words began to take on meaning, the strange place resolving into something she hadn't seen in...in...gods, how long had it been? 

"Miss--you need to calm down..." 

"Sir, you really can't be in here right now..." 

A hospital. The people were speaking Japanese. Her...her mother tongue. The floor was cold because it was tiled.

And the person in front of her was...

He was...

The words came out disbelieving. "O...nii-san...?" 

#

Ryou and his sister were lost to the world. Looking at the girl, the most disconcerting approximation of a female Bakura Marik had seen, even if she _was_ dressed in a hospital gown, Marik could tell that she didn't even notice him standing there behind her brother. And he could also tell that Ryou, who was staring at his sister as if she were a vision that could vanish at any moment, didn't notice that Bakura had shifted slightly to the side, so that he was hidden from the doorway.

While Ryou eyed Amane, Marik eyed the thief. When the situation in the hospital room had cleared up and the nurses were closing the door, leaving Ryou with his sister, Marik tugged on Bakura's sleeve, leading him further down the hallway, away from the door. The thief looked amused, but went anyway.

"What do you know about that girl?" Marik asked.

Bakura's smirk turned into a full-on, insufferable grin. "What makes you think I know anything about that girl?"

"Well for starters," Marik said, gesturing at the hospital, "You're here. You usually find any excuse you can to skip the sappy reunions."

"Maybe I was just curious."

Marik glared. "And the reason you don't want her to see you? Is that also because you're curious?"

"Now, now, Marik," Bakura said. "That girl's been missing for ten years. Do you really want _me_ to be the first thing she sees?"

"Oh, because you expect me to believe you're hiding out of the goodness of your heart."

"I'm...what is it the landlord is always going on about? Turning over a new leaf? It worked well enough for you."

Marik snorted. "Just tell me what you know."

"You seem _very_ interested. I didn't realize girls in hospitals were your kink."

Sometimes, Marik really regretted putting in the work to bring Bakura back from the Shadow Realm. And sometimes, he was glad he had, because it made it possible to strangle him. "I'm a tombkeeper. Ancient Egyptian magic is my _job_. And Ryou's dead sister in there shouting at medical staff in Ancient Egyptian. Isis is breathing down my neck enough as it is, so if you _know something about her, for the love of Ra, tell me."_  
_T_  
Bakura, if anything, only seemed more amused by his frustration. He stepped back, just out of grabbing reach, and said, "I don't know, Marik. Why don't you try asking _her_?"

#

There was something in the room with her.

After assuring her that her brother could come back tomorrow, the nurses had left Amane alone to get some sleep, but sleep had come to her in patches. The bed was too soft, the humming of the aircon kept her awake. She felt as if she had barely gotten to sleep when she was awakened by the sudden, bone-deep knowledge that she _wasn't alone._ She waited, forcing herself to keep the calm, peaceful breathing of sleep, as the presence drew closer. And then, when she felt it pull back an arm to strike, she moved, opening her eyes.

She caught a hand inches from her head, and lashed out with her other hand, fingers aiming for eye sockets. Her attacker jerked his head back, grabbing her wrist, and she looked up to see white hair reflected in the hospital room lights, brown eyes that looked so much like her brother's, but weren't. A savage grin.

"Well, Shadow," the figure said, in Egyptian, "It looks like you're still awake."

Amane blinked. It was impossible, and yet...this day had been filled with so many impossible things. "Ba...kura?" she asked.

"Amani," Bakura said, nodding his head. "Amani. Amane. You know, I never put two and two together. I actually _forgot_ what you said to me the first time we met. Can you believe that?" He chuckled darkly. "We were such dumb brats." 

Amane's eyes darted to the hand she was holding, to the weapon inches from her head. It turned out to be the back end of a ballpoint pen, not even the sharp part. She looked up at him and Bakura smirked, wiggling the pen in his hand. 

"My own reflex test. Don't worry. I come in peace." 

Amane frowned in suspicion, but after a moment of thought, released her hold on him. Bakura returned the favor and stepped back from the bed. He raised his hands beside his head, fingers splayed in a mocking way, and then lowered them to his side. Amane pulled her own wrist back towards herself, frowning at him. 

He looked...different from the last time she had seen him. For starters, he had always looked like her brother, but now the resemblance was uncanny. The wildness she had seen in him back then had sharpened now, anger and rage morphing into cunning and irreverence. His scar was gone and he looked...He looked like he fit into the modern world better than she did, which irritated her to no end. 

"How did you get here?" she asked.

"It's a very, _very_ long story," Bakura said. "Unfortunately, you left just before it started getting good. Let's just say it had to do with your brother. And the Millennium Ring." 

The Ring. An image flashed through her mind, the Ring hanging from Mahad's neck. She had seen Mahad just three days...no, no, of course it hadn't been three days ago. Her head was hurting, and she winced. 

"What do you mean, I 'left'?" Amane asked instead, because it was easier. 

"Well, at the time, everyone thought you _died_ ," Bakura said. "But let me guess. That was when you 'left'. It was that business with the sorcerer...what was his name again?" 

"Khamet," Amane said, and Bakura's words did nothing to ease her suspicions. "How do you _know_ about that?" 

Bakura grinned. "When the Shadow of Ammit vanishes into thin air, people tend to take notice. It caused a bit of a stir in the underground."

"Oh," Amane said. "Well, that's a relief. I almost thought you _cared_." 

"I cared enough to find out that you got him in the end." 

Amane remembered the closing portal, remembered the knife leaving her hand as she fell. She felt a twinge of relief. She'd thought it had hit his mark, but she hadn't been sure. Portals, she was quickly beginning to understand, were _very_ disconcerting. She looked at Bakura, who still looked like he was wearing her brother's skin, and wanted to know more about how he had gotten here. But the throbbing in her head had gotten stronger, and there would be time enough for that. Instead, she asked him, "Does my brother know?" 

"The answer is usually 'no'." 

She wanted to reach out and strangle him, but she thought that she might be sick if she moved, so she settled for a glare and asked again, "Does my brother know about _me_? About us, about...who we were back then?" 

Bakura was still smirking, as if he knew exactly the effect he was having and was enjoying it entirely too much. But he said, simply and nonchalantly, "No." 

Amane sagged in relief. She hadn't realized until she had seen her brother how much had changed. Between them, and with him, and with her. "Don't tell him..." she said. "Please." 

"Don't worry," Bakura said, smiling as if at some private joke. "I'm used to keeping him in the dark." 

She felt terrible about it, but the adrenaline had faded, leaving an exhaustion deeper than before. At that moment, all she wanted to do was sleep. She looked back up at the ceiling, not wanting to admit to the weakness, but Bakura must have seen it anyway, because she felt him start to leave. 

A thought occurred to her when he was almost at the door. It was a wild, childish hope, and she surprised herself with the force of it, but she looked up. "Bakura..." she said. "If...if you're here...then...?" 

Bakura stopped very deliberately, as if he had been expecting this the whole time. He looked at her over his shoulder, and the look in his eye, the dark amusement there, gave her a very bad feeling. "Yes?" 

Amane swallowed, but she had already committed herself to the question. "Is there anyone else...from back then?" 

"Anyone else?" Bakura asked. "Oh. Are you talking about the Pharaoh?" 

Her heart jumped. She couldn't help it. That stupid, traitorous heart. She'd been cursing it since that day at the oasis. That day...

Bakura was watching her, so she nodded her head. His smirk widened. "Oh," he said. "This is lovely. You've just missed him. He's...well, you might say he's gone to the west." He laughed suddenly. It was a savage laugh, and it cut into her soul. "Gone off with Osiris. Gone to be with his ka." He was still laughing. "He's dead, little girl. He's _dead_. After everything you've done for him, you missed him in the end. Don't worry, though." 

His grin widened, even as, in that moment, Amane felt like her heart was shattering. "You still have me..." 


	3. Carousel

Marik would have bet money that Bakura had left the house last night. He had no actual evidence, and he hadn't _seen_ Bakura leave or return, but his futon was in the living room, and he'd woken up at around three in the morning to the disturbing sound of Bakura pacing the foyer and chuckling to himself. When covering his face with a pillow failed to muffle the sounds, he'd gotten up to ask Bakura what in all the hells was so funny. Bakura had responded with a cryptic "Oh, nothing," and had climbed the stairs to his bedroom-slash-lair, laughing the entire time.

So, yes. Unless the mental effects of the Shadow Realm were even stronger than believed, Bakura had left the house. Marik even thought he knew where he had gone, although of course, there was no way to prove it. Short of asking Amane Bakura herself, which was what he was on his way to do.

The sun wasn't even up when Marik slipped into the kitchen, which was in its usual state of slightly-better-than-a-war-zone. He tried to move as quietly as possible, but scalded himself accidentally with hot water and couldn't quite stop himself from hissing something vile. He shook his hand out and looked around, but the house was quiet. Marik counted to three under his breath and, seeing no one, mixed some hot water and instant coffee into a thermos and slipped it into his school bag. He tossed a bruised apple in there with it and was just weighing the merits of fixing himself a piece of toast when he heard footsteps on the stairs. A shadow darkened the kitchen from the hallway. 

"Marik...?" asked a sleepy voice, "Are you leaving already?" 

Marik tensed, looking over his shoulder. Ryou was still dressed in his pajamas, his silver hair sticking up in all directions. He was rubbing his eyes, one hand on the door frame. A thousand lies passed through Marik's head, but he was standing in the kitchen dressed in a school uniform at an hour when everyone should have just been waking up, and there was really no playing any of that off. Besides, it wasn't like he should _have_ to lie, or anything. Why _shouldn't_ he tell Ryou the truth? 

"Uh...I was thinking of going to the hospital before school," he said, forcing a smile that he hoped looked natural and not creepy. "To...talk to your sister. If you don't mind." 

Ryou nodded solemnly, and somehow his non-reaction made Marik feel even stupider about the whole thing. "That makes sense. You want to talk to her about how she got here." 

"So, you don't mind?" 

"No," Ryou said, frowning. "Should I?" 

Bakura's sneering face filled Marik's mind, and Marik inwardly cursed the thief for making this a bigger deal than it needed to be. "No, no, of course not," he said. "I'll be gone before you get there." 

Ryou nodded again. It had already been decided last night that he would skip school today to be with his sister. Bakura hadn't said anything of the sort, but Marik sincerely doubted he would see him today. Bakura's enrollment might have been one of the pre-conditions to 'living a normal human life', but his actual attendance was something usually left to the whims of fickle gods without Ryou or Marik to force him out of the house. 

"You'll let me know if you find anything out?" Ryou asked, moving away from the doorway. 

Marik had no idea what it was about Bakura's former host that made him feel so awkward. Maybe it was because the two of them were so different, and yet looked so similar. Maybe it was the fact that Marik also knew what it was like to have something darker lurking in the back of his mind, and never really knew what he would have done if that darker half had a friend who crashed at his house all the time. Or maybe it was just that Ryou's air of calm acceptance and resignation could...honestly be a little unnerving. 

Maybe it was just because after everything that had happened, he felt like he _owed_ Ryou something, and he had never really grown used to the feeling of being indebted to people. 

Whatever it was, Marik tried to keep that out of his mind, tried to sound cheerful as he made his way out the door, lifting his hand in a wave. 

"Sure, Ryou. Whatever I know, you'll know." 

#

The feeling of awkwardness only grew as Marik pulled his motorcycle into the hospital parking lot. Growing up as he had, there were certain human interactions that still didn't feel natural to him, and one of them was visiting people when they were sick. Isis's text to 'bring her something' was profoundly unhelpful. Flowers would have felt ridiculous coming from him, and as far as he knew, Hallmark didn't make cards that said 'I'm sorry you were trapped in the past, but I hope you feel better soon'. In the end, he settled for a box of strawberry milk and a red bean bun from the hospital vending machine, but that just made him feel silly as he walked through the mostly empty halls, looking for Amane's hospital room. 

She was awake, which surprised him, sitting up in bed and picking at the remnants of a thoroughly unappetizing-looking breakfast. To Marik's admittedly untrained eye, she looked somehow...diminished from the night before, hunching over her tray and poking at it listlessly. She looked up as soon as he stepped into the doorway, green eyes fixing him, but they didn't have the same...spark they had yesterday. 

He coughed to clear his throat, holding up his presents. 

"You probably don't know who I am--," he began, in Japanese. 

"You were with my brother last night." She spoke the words haltingly, as if her tongue was still unused to the language. Looking at her now, Marik was surprised to find how small she actually was, just on the edge of scrawny. Her skin was tanned from the sun, and she bore some marks of a difficult life--he could see the faint outline of scars on her skin, beneath the tan lines where her jewelry had been. 

He swallowed, realizing he'd been staring and said, "I...didn't think you noticed me."

Amane smiled faintly, and it was a slightly self-deprecating smile. "You were the only Egyptian around. You stood out." 

Marik nodded. He stepped forward, moving out of the doorway, and set the gifts on the tray in front of her. 

"Do you prefer Japanese or Egyptian?" he asked, switching into that other language. 

Amane's brows rose, but she followed his lead. "I didn't realize they still spoke that language in this day and age." 

"They don't," Marik said, "But I speak it. My name is Marik Ishtar. My family was...we were the keepers of the Pharaoh's tomb. And all of its treasures." 

Amane nodded, and he saw her brows furrow in thought, fingers toying with the edge of the sheet that covered her. "You're priests," she said. 

Marik winced. "Not really." 

"Sorcerers?" 

He shrugged. "Some of us." 

"But you've worked magic before," Amane's eyes fixed on him, bottle green and suddenly knife-sharp. "You're the one who brought the Thief King back, aren't you?"

Marik blinked at her in surprise. The only words that came out, after a moment, was, "So, you do know each other." 

Amane sighed, and seemed to diminish again. She lowered her gaze from his, shoulders slumping, and picked up the box of strawberry milk. Her fingers worked the straw free a little uncertainly, as if she had forgotten how, but she managed to stab it into the box without much difficulty. Her only answer was, "Your pronunciation could use a little work." 

Deflection, Marik realized, was probably hard-coded into the Bakura DNA. He ignored the jab and asked, "Did he come to see you last night?" 

Amane didn't say anything for a while, holding the box of strawberry milk in her hands. She seemed to be at war with herself. After a moment, she seemed to have come to a decision, because she nodded slowly. Marik felt a flash of triumph for being right, but now wasn't exactly the time to gloat. 

"And?" he asked. "What did he say to you?" 

She pressed her lips together into a tight line. After a moment, she said, "...When you say you guarded the Pharaoh's tomb, which Pharaoh were you talking about?" 

"For the longest time, he was nameless," Marik said. He watched her face very closely as he answered. "But now we know that his name was Pharaoh Atem." 

Her eyes widened, and her fingers tightened, ever so slightly, on the box. Strawberry milk began to creep up inside the straw, a lurid pink that clashed with the situation. She let out a shaky breath, loosened her grip, and said, "I...served the Pharaoh, in a way, although he was rarely involved in my work. Bakura..." Her voice grew hard at the name, her eyes narrowing, "...came by to tell me that my services were no longer needed." 

Marik understood. "Bastard." 

Amane shook her head, the corners of her lips curling up into what might have been a smile. "Don't worry. I had it coming." 

"Why do you say that?" 

"You said you guarded the Pharaoh's treasures," Amane said. "Do you know anything about his past? About how the Millennium Items were created?" 

Marik nodded slowly, understanding and not liking where this was going. "Yes," he said. 

"So," Amane said. "You know about Kul Elna..." 

#

_One night, a few months after arriving in this place, Amane woke to an unfamiliar sound. At first, she thought it was an intruder, and she rolled over onto her side, one hand reaching for her knife. When she opened her eyes, though, the cave was empty except for the two of them. Moonlight filtered in through the cave entrance, painting everything in shades of white and gray. She looked around for the intruder, for whoever had made the noise, but saw nobody._

_Bakura was on his side, facing away from her. He was curled up into a tight ball, his shoulders shaking. Amane stared at him and realized that the sound was coming from him. He was breathing hard, his breath hitching. As she listened, she heard him make soft, groaning sounds, like an animal in pain. There were words in the sounds, and she had lived here long enough to understand them now._

_"No. No, stop...no, please don't...no..."_

_He whimpered, a long, pathetic whine. With a start, Amane realized he was dreaming. The realization scared her, because in the months that she had been here, she had never heard Bakura beg, or whimper, or plead. Even when he was injured, or hungry, or tired. Even when he was in pain._

_She watched him, and then, making a decision, she dropped the knife. Slowly, Amane crawled over to his side of their sleeping patch. Up close, she could see that his expression had contorted into one of agony, that his hands had clenched into fists._

_She reached down and touched his shoulder lightly._

_She'd only meant to wake him, but she hadn't been prepared for his reaction. His eyes snapped open, and he threw himself upward with a gasp, flinging her away from him. She tumbled back, hitting the ground with a yelp. Bakura looked around the cave, confused, and then he swung around to face her._

_"Don't touch me!" he shouted, angrier than she had ever seen him. "Don't_ ever _touch me!"_

_There was a look in his eyes that she had never seen before. Fury and behind it, something that scared her. Something like hatred, but also something like fear. She tried to find her voice._

_"You--you were dreaming," she said. "I--."_

_"It's none of your business!" Bakura said. "You stupid girl, if you do that again, I'll--."_

_He was looming over her, hands still clenched into fists. Amane took in a sharp breath, curling into herself as he raised his hand. She squeezed her eyes shut, bracing for the blow, but Bakura's hand froze in midair. He stared at it, eyes wide as if he had just realized what he was about to do._

_Hesitantly, Amane raised her gaze to his. Bakura looked at her, then at his hand. He tossed the blanket that had covered him at her instead, blinding her for an instant as he got to his feet. When she managed to disentangle herself from the rough cloth, she realized that Bakura had walked over to the cave entrance. The moonlight reflected off his face._

_He looked suddenly so very tired._ _Amane wanted to reach out for him, but she was still scared, and she knew better now._

_"Go back to sleep and never do that again," he said._

_She tried, she honestly did. She crawled back over to her side of the sleeping area and lay down, trying to sleep. When she opened her eyes again, some time later, she noticed that Bakura had settled by the mouth of the cave. He was sitting with his back to the wall, his knees pulled up close to himself and his arms wrapped around tightly. He was still shaking. He had his knife clutched in one hand, the blade catching the moonlight, but his head was close to his knees. She closed her eyes quickly, not wanting him to think she had seen him like that, but she thought..._

_...She thought he'd been crying._

#

Marik spent the day at school doodling hieroglyphics into the margins of his textbook. He didn't think he noticed when classes changed, his body going through the motions of putting away one notebook and replacing it with another, the rhythms of life at school that would have been so alien to him once but were now, even after a few months, so familiar. His mind was still in that hospital room earlier that morning, on the remainder of his conversation with Amane Bakura. 

_"...Can you tell me how you got here?"_

_By then, Amane had drunk all the strawberry milk, and was now methodically tearing into the red bean bun, ripping chunks out between her fingers and popping them into her mouth. He was leaning against the wall by the window. She paused in her work, a slight frown on her face as she looked up._

_"I'm not really sure..." she said. "It was very confusing."_

_"Can you tell me what you remember?" Marik asked. When she hesitated, he added, "I won't tell anyone else."_

_She sighed, pushing away the remnants of the bun for now. "I was fighting someone," she said. "A sorcerer. He'd been performing black magic." Her lips pulled into a tight frown. "He was preparing an act of treason. He'd performed sacrifices to gain power. There were children...He'd been experimenting with soul transfers." She shook her head._

_Marik nodded, undisturbed. "Why were you fighting him?"_

_"Because it's what I do..." Amane frowned and corrected herself. "Did. For the Pharaoh's court. I...caught criminals._ _This sorcerer--Khamet--he'd been causing a lot of trouble for a long time."_

_"And he sent you back to the present?" Marik asked._

_"I don't think that's what he meant to do. I think he wanted to trap me in another dimension. I still don't know how I ended up here."_

_"It's probably because your soul was never bound to Ancient Egypt in the first place," Marik said. "You're from this time, so when he tried to trap you into another dimension, your soul decided to come home instead."_

_"Maybe..." Amane said. "I threw at the knife at the end. Bakura says I killed him. Maybe that messed up his spell. I still don't really understand magic, or how I ended up 'there' in the first place."_

That _was admittedly a little more troubling. Marik made a note to ask Isis about it at some point, the next time he talked to her on the phone. He thought about asking more, but Amane looked not at the clock on the wall but at the position of the sun behind him and said, "Don't you have school? Is this going to make you late?"_

_He looked at the time on his phone and realized that they had been talking for entirely too long, and had wasted too much time talking about Bakura instead of about what he'd actually needed to talk to her about. He was a little upset to see how much time had passed, but it didn't matter, because he had the information he wanted._

_He said, "I probably should get going. But I live with your brother and Bakura right now, so..."_

_Amane nodded. "I'm sure we'll see each other soon."_

_That was that. Marik picked up his schoolbag, making his way to the door. He was halfway there when Amane stopped him._

_"Um..." she said. "Khamet's...really dead, isn't he?"_

_Marik paused, looking over his shoulder at her. "I wasn't there," he said. "You were. If you say he's dead..."_

_Amane shook her head. "I think I killed him. And Bakura says I did. He's usually right about that sort of thing..."_

_The way she said that sounded a little too questioning for his taste. Marik started to have a bad feeling. "But...?" he asked._

_"Maybe it's just that I didn't see him die. Last night, I dreamed that he was still alive. That he was hunting me, in the modern world. But that was probably just a dream, right...?"_

_Something about the way she said it bothered him, but he couldn't put his finger on why. "Yeah..." he said. "Probably just a dream."_

"Hey!" a voice said from above him. "Hey! Earth to Marik Ishtar!" 

Marik blinked, and looked up from his doodling to see that Yugi and his friends had surrounded his desk. The classroom was half-empty. He hadn't even realized that they'd broken for lunch. Normally, he ate lunch alone or with Bakura, but the thief hadn't deigned to show his face today after all, and he'd missed his window to sneak out of the classroom alone. 

It was Jounouchi Katsuya who had spoken, because of course it was. The blond was waving one hand in front of his face. Marik sighed and shut his notebook. 

"What?" he asked. 

"We were thinking you could eat with us," Yugi said, smiling.

"We're going up to the roof," said Anzu, as brightly as if he _hadn't_ taken over her mind and tried to use her against her friends a little over a year ago. "You should come with us, if you want."

"Jou's sister is coming," said Honda, grinning. 

"Hey, you stay away from my sister!" 

Marik could think of several things he wanted more than to spend lunch break with Yugi and his friends, but he had no real reason to refuse. And he knew that it would bother him if he did. Guilt was a terrible thing. He tried for a smile that wasn't too much of a grimace as he got to his feet.

"Sure. Why not?" 

"We heard Ryou's sister came back," said Anzu as he got to his feet. "Do you know anything about it?" 

He knew that they weren't just asking to eat with him out of the goodness of their hearts. Still, his conversation with Amane was weighing heavily on his mind, and he supposed there were worse things to talk about. Besides, Jou, Honda, and even Yugi were looking at him expectantly now, and it felt good to know something they didn't. 

"Oh..." he said. "I know a few things. You'll have to ask Ryou for the rest, but..." 

#

The street where the girl had fallen was back in regular operation, the police having cleaned up the scene during the night. Looking at it, it was hard to imagine that anything had happened, and if you hadn't been watching the news the night before, it would have been easy to miss. 

The businessman walking down the sidewalk on his way to a lunch meeting _had_ been watching the news the night before, but he didn't care. Strange things always happened in Domino City. He was sure that Kaiba Corp or Industrial Illusions or some other big company would eventually step in and claim that it was a publicity stunt of some kind, especially because the news reports claimed that the girl, somehow, hadn't been seriously injured by the fall. He was more concerned with his lunch meeting. He couldn't afford to miss it. 

It was because he was running late that he cut through an alley, just off the intersection where the incident had happened. He shouldn't have stopped. He really should have kept walking, except that his attention was drawn by a glint of gold out of the corner of his eye. He looked down and saw a gold bead at the edges of the alleyway, about the size of a marble. 

It was probably just a prop, or a piece of costume jewelry. But then again, the girl had been wearing jewelry when she'd fallen, hadn't she? It couldn't hurt to take a look.

He bent down and picked up the bead. 

Something rippled through him at the touch, a dark shadow. It rose from the bead and settled over him, seeping into his skin. The businessman rose from the ground, tucking the bead into the pocket of his suit. He smirked, picking up his briefcase. 

This wasn't an ideal vessel. But it would do for now. 


	4. Gossamer

"Well, everything looks normal," the doctor said, pulling his stethoscope back from Amane's chest. "You're in remarkably good health considering what you've been through, Amane-san."

From Amane's other side, Ryou let out a breath of relief. The doctor, a kindly-looking middle-aged man, gave her an encouraging smile, stepping back to scribble something down onto her chart.

"X-rays and blood work came back normal as well," he said. "All things considered, you're a little underweight, but not to the point where I think we should be concerned. I'd like to keep you here another night for observation, but I see no reason why you shouldn't be able to go home tomorrow."

"Thank goodness," Ryou said. He offered Amane a relieved smile. "Isn't that great, Amane?"

Amane tried to return the sentiment with a smile of her own, but the expression still felt alien on her face. It had been a...trying pair of days, and more and more, she was wondering if her decision not to tell Ryou the truth was the right one. She said, "I'm excited to go home," and tried her best to believe that that was in fact true.

"Now, you'll need to make an appointment to come back for your vaccinations," the doctor went on, "You're missing a few booster shots. And since I'm not sure what time travel does to the immune system, I would recommend the full course of vaccines again, just to be safe." His laugh was forced, as if he were doing his best to make light of a situation that was really a lot stranger than it seemed.

Ryou must have noticed too, because he said, "I really can't thank you enough for everything you've done for us, Doctor Mizuno."

"Think nothing of it, Ryou-kun," the doctor said, smiling. "If anything, this has been the most interesting year of my career. Although, speaking of vaccinations, it would be good if you could convince your 'brother' to come in to finish his."

Ryou's smile was a little strained. "I'll do my best."

"Now..." Doctor Mizuno frowned, looking down at Amane's charts. "We just need to figure out what we'll do about her records. And what we'll do about _that_." He gestured at the window with one hand, sighing heavily.

Amane's eyes drifted to the window as well. From where she was lying, she couldn't _quite_ see the street outside, but she _had_ seen the Domino News. The first news van arrived shortly after Marik's departure, and the others had followed. From the sound of it, some of the reporters had gotten into the hallway, where hospital staff were trying their best to keep them out.

She looked up suddenly as the sounds outside the room increased in volume, accompanied by a shout.

"Hey! Hey, get back, you vultures!"

Beside her, Ryou perked up as well, half-rising from his seat. The door to her hospital room slid open, and a young blond boy pushed a brown-haired girl in ahead of him, blocking the view of the room with his body. Amane saw camera flashes from in front of him as he shook a fist at the crowd of reporters, stepping backward into the hospital room. He slammed the door shut. Amane stared. She didn't recognize him, but he was wearing the same dark blue uniform she had seen on Marik, except his was rumpled from, presumably, fighting through the crowd. The girl wore a school uniform as well, a bright pink blazer and a skirt. She held a slightly-less pink duffel bag by the straps, and also looked out of breath.

"Jounouchi?" Ryou asked, getting up. "Shizuka?"

The boy turned towards them and grinned, raising a hand in the wave. "Yo, Ryou," he said. "Marik told us all about your sister at lunch. Shizuka had a great idea."

The girl, who Amane guessed was Shizuka, smiled at Amane, tugging at the straps of the bag she was carrying. "Hello, Amane-chan," she said. "I hope you don't mind-I brought you some spare clothes. There's some pajamas in here and some toiletries, and I wasn't sure about your size, but I brought a few outfits from home."

"That's really nice of you, Shizuka," Ryou began, and then he caught himself. "Oh, I'm sorry. Amane, this is my friend from school, Jounouchi Katsuya, and his younger sister, Shizuka Kawai. Shizuka is about your age. Jounouchi, Shizuka, this is my younger sister Amane."

Amane returned their answering smiles. "Very nice to meet you."

"Yeah, nice to meet you," Jounouchi said. "Gotta say, it's been a while since we met someone from Ancient Egypt. Didja happen to run into Atem while you were there?"

 _"Jou!"_ Shizuka said.

Amane smiled. Hearing the name stabbed at her heart, but she had had most of the day to make her peace with it. It still hurt, but Jounouchi had a bright, innocent sort of smile, the sort of smile that told her he might have been careless but that he didn't mean any harm. After her conversation with Bakura and all the memories _that_ had dredged up, it was...refreshing.

"We met a few times," she said. "It's nice to hear he had friends here too."

"Well, any friend of Atem's is a friend of mine," Jounouchi said. He gestured at his chest grandly with his thumb. "You ever need anything, you just let me know, alright?"

Amane almost laughed. "Likewise."

Out of the corner of her eye, she caught Ryou watching her curiously and she winced, but this much, at least, was safe. It was safe for Ryou to know that she knew Atem. To draw his attention away from it, she turned towards the girl, Shizuka.

"Thank you for the clothes," she said. "I hope it's not too much trouble."

"Oh, it's no trouble at all," Shizuka said, smiling brightly. "I was in the hospital for a while myself, so I know it's so much nicer when you have some of your own things to wear. And Marik said you didn't have anything."

Amane's smile grew wry. "I didn't exactly get to pack a bag when I got pushed through a portal," she said. "And I don't think any of my clothes would have worked here anyway."

"Yeah, Marik said something about that," Jounouchi said. "He said it was a bad accident. I didn't get all the details but...it sounded like a bad time."

'Accident' was certainly an interesting way to put it. Still, Ryou was looking at her a _little_ too closely for her liking, and she _had_ told Marik not to tell anyone about Khamet, so she went along with it. "It wasn't the best," she said, with deliberate nonchalance. "But I _did_ get to end up on TV, so there's that."

That last part might have hit a little too close to home. Judging from the growing media presence, it seemed like all anyone could talk about was the girl who fell from the sky. Amane opened her mouth, about to add something to that effect when she heard the clamor in the hallway grow louder again. Jounouchi turned towards the door, a look of disgust on his face.

"Geez, this a hospital," he said. "Doesn't anybody respect that anymore?"

Ryou shushed him, and it took Amane a second to realize why. If she listened closely, she could make out words under all the noise. One voice in particular stood out.

"Mr. Kaiba, Mr. Kaiba, can you comment on yesterday's incident?"

"The incident was nothing more than an advertisement for Kaiba Corp's new duel disk," an imperious voice said. "The girl was just an actress hired for the job. She fell when her harness failed. The people responsible have already been fired. Now get out of my way."

"But what about the rumors that the girl actually died in a car crash ten years ago?"

"What, are you stupid or something? Dead people don't come back to life. Is this really what passes for journalism in this city? Mokuba, contact this man's supervisor. I want to file a complaint."

"Yes, Seto," another, younger voice said.

"But-but Mr. Kaiba-."

"Any further questions can be directed to my PR team. I want this hallway clear in ten minutes."

"You can't do that! This is a public hospital!"

"Not anymore."

Amane had just a moment to register that Jounouchi's expression suddenly looked like someone had forced him to drink lemon juice, before the door to her hospital room opened again and a storm blew in. This storm was dressed in an entirely over-the-top white coat, with brown hair, blue eyes, and features that Amane, sadly, recognized. He was carrying a metal briefcase in one hand. A suited boy who looked just a little younger than herself and Shizuka followed him.

"I'll just be going now, shall I?" the, up-to-then forgotten Doctor Mizuno said, getting to his feet and slipping quietly out of the room.

"What the hell are you doing here, Kaiba?" Jounouchi asked.

Kaiba ignored him and the doctor both, walking up to her hospital bed. He glared down at her, and Amane got the impression that he was used to glaring down at people from this height. "Are you the girl that came back from Ancient Egypt?"

She really was going to have to learn better Japanese. She had spent the whole day alternating between talking to her brother and watching TV, and felt like some of it was coming back to her, but she just didn't have the _vocabulary_ to say anything properly cutting. Maybe she could trick Bakura into teaching her.

"I am," she said. "And which planet did you come from?"

"Cute," Kaiba said, flatly. "I'm researching time travel. I heard that you were acquainted with the Pharaoh. You'll help with my research."

Amane bristled at his tone. "And why would I do that?" she asked, drawing herself up straighter.

"Because knowing how to go back to the past would benefit _you_ ," Kaiba said. He glared down at her. "Or am I wrong?"

He wasn't, and she hated that that was the case. Just the possibility of going back made her feel a stab of longing, followed by guilt. To cover it up, she said, "I don't work for free."

Kaiba reached into his coat, whipping out a checkbook emblazoned with the letters KC. He also found a pen shaped like a blue dragon, which might have been amusing if he wasn't so serious about the whole thing. With a flourish, he wrote out an amount and tore the check out of the book, handing it to her.

"Will that do?"

Amane glanced down at the numbers, but without reference, they meant nothing to her. She held it out for Ryou to see. His eyes grew round, and he sputtered, telling her exactly what she needed to know.

"Yes," she said. "That'll do."

"Mokuba will handle your schedule," Kaiba said. "The sooner we get this done, the better."

He turned, sweeping from the room. His lackey, the younger, black-haired boy that Amane assumed was Mokuba, paused to smile at them. "I'll get in touch with you through your brother for now, Amane. When you get a cellphone, you can call me. Nice seeing you all!"

He waved at the assembled group and then followed Kaiba out. In his wake, Amane exhaled, letting out a long sigh. "Ra, I still can't stand that guy."

"You've never met him before, Amane-chan," Ryou said.

"Not in this lifetime." She brushed away questions with a wave of her hand, perking up. "So. Is this enough to get a 'cell...phone'?"

Ryou glanced at the check in her hand again. "I'd say so, yes."

"Great," Amane said. "We can pick it up tomorrow on the way home. And I should probably get some of my own clothes...what _do_ people wear in this time anyway?"

"Oh, that ain't a problem," Jounouchi said. "Shizuka can help you with that! Can't you?"

Shizuka nodded, smiling. "We can go shopping this weekend, Amane-chan. It'll be fun."

"And we can bring Yugi and the guys over when you get out of the hospital tomorrow," Jounouchi added. "They'd love to meet you. They're all Atem's friends too."

Amane smiled. They were just so...so _nice._ It was adorable."Great. I can't wait."

#

By the time Marik parked his motorcycle outside the house, he wasn't in a good mood. But then again, he would have challenged anyone to find the teenager who would be in a good mood after waking up before dawn to go to the hospital, spending a full day at school, and then spending most of the evening wandering around downtown in a fruitless search for 'magical energy', or whatever vague thing Isis was telling him to look out for via text. He almost- _almost-_ wished that his sister would come out here herself, but the thought of the way she would instantly try to run his life put him off the thought before it had even fully formed.

He held his helmet in one hand and his schoolbag in the other, shouldering his way through the front door. The hallway was dark, but there was a light on upstairs. Marik climbed the stairs and came to a stop, because the upstairs hallway, normally an unremarkable stretch between rooms, was suddenly filled with dusty boxes and old suitcases, stacked so that there was only a narrow space between them.

Bakura sat perched cross-legged on top of one of the boxes, a bottle of water in one hand and a cellphone in the other. Marik walked over to him.

"What's this all about?" he asked.

"Landlord wants to move the little brat into the attic," Bakura said. He paused whatever he was doing to smirk at Marik. "As far away from your wandering eyes as possible."

Marik scowled in annoyance. He reached into his schoolbag, drawing a stack of workbooks and sheets of paper, which he shoved at Bakura. Bakura's smirk turned into a snarl as he had to grab the papers without also dropping the phone.

"Here," Marik said. "Your _homework_. We have a math test coming up, not that you'll even bother to study."

"Oh, please," Bakura said, flipping through the workbooks with disinterest. "I've been alive for three thousand years, Marik. I think I've learned how to _count_."

"Did you count how many days you've missed this year? Or were you just planning on taking another three thousand years to graduate?"

Bakura closed the workbook with a snap. "In case you've forgotten, Marik, legally Amane is my sister too," he said. "Did you think about how it would look if I went to school but Ryou didn't?"

"He does have a point, Marik," Ryou said, looking into the hallway from the loft that led to the attic. He climbed down the ladder carefully, holding a feather duster, a rag, and a bottle of cleaning spray in one hand. His clothes were coated in a layer of dust, and he pulled down the face mask he was wearing to talk more clearly. "Did you bring my homework too?"

Bakura grinned in triumph, which made Marik want to swat him. Instead, he pulled the second set of homework from his bag, handing it to Ryou. Ryou set down the cleaning supplies to flip through the workbooks in his hand, wincing.

"You can't honestly be worried," Bakura said. "It's just geometry."

"I think you were possessing me the entire time we went over that unit," said Ryou. "When did you say the test was, Marik?"

"It's on Friday."

Ryou's expression looked pained. Bakura let out a breath that sounded almost like a laugh. Marik glanced at him.

"Are you actually going to be there?"

"Of course I am," Bakura said. "Watching Katsuya and Honda squirm when I score higher than them without even trying is one of the few joys left in my life."

"Well, I think we should all take some time to study tonight," Ryou said. "But we'll have to do your room next after the attic."

Bakura looked up. "What? What do we have to do with my room?"

"Clean the floors," Ryou said. "I'm moving back in for a bit."

_"Why?!"_

"Because Father's coming, and he'll need his room back," Ryou said.

"Why is he coming _here_?"

"Because his daughter just came back from the dead."

"So what?" Bakura said. "People come back from the dead all the time here. No one threw a party for _me_ when I came back from the dead."

"Because they were afraid you would _eat them_ ," Marik said, dryly.

"It will only be for a few weeks," Ryou said, frowning at Bakura. "We shared a body before."

"And it was an experience _neither_ of us want to repeat. Just put him up at a hotel. Use some of that money Amane scammed out of Kaiba."

"This is _his_ house," said Ryou, before Marik could ask what that even meant.

Bakura snorted, waving his hand in the air. "He's been away for so long, it's practically _abandoned_. And if he really cared, landlord, he wouldn't just be coming back for a few _weeks_."

Ryou frowned, but Marik could tell from his expression that the words had struck home. "That...was the only time he could get away from his job."

Bakura snorted softly. Marik decided that it might, possibly, be time to get between them. He cleared his throat. "Should I find somewhere else to stay?"

"Oh, no, Marik, of course not-," Ryou began.

"Oh, that's perfect!" Bakura said, interrupting him. "You can put him up in the living room. Let Marik sleep somewhere else."

Ryou's response was to glance over at Bakura. "Or Marik could just move into your room instead of me."

There was a pause. A pause during which Bakura sat frozen, and Marik allowed himself to imagine a horde of nightmarish, terrible things, and then Bakura stood up suddenly, pushing himself off of the crate.

"Pack your things," he told Ryou. "I'll clean up myself."

Before any of them could say anything, he stepped into the room, slamming the door shut behind him.


End file.
